That works for people who are people pleassrs and accepted into society readily. I was 'smart' in school. I didn't find my people until I got into bigger societies... because there weren't other people on my wavelength in my small town. When I chose to attachment parent my kids, phenomenon repeated. Then when my kids were vax injured, same thing. During covid, same thing. We have to have the bigger groups for us to find our people who see us as human when we no longer fit their narrative comfortably. Basically, I've not seen that people have your back even if you are a human to them, except in rare circumstances. I don't know where this research for 150 came from, but I'm super skeptical of it.
VERY interesting point. Certainly small towns can get quite stagnant.
That said, I guess a small polity does not have to be like M. Knight Shyamalan's "The Village"—cut off from everyone else. It can also just serve as the administrative unit, with people free to interact as they wish.
In a small town or city, you can have 12k or more people wanting to know your business or eager to watch the drama unfold when it happens. It puts you in a position where you need to care. Then there is all the gossip that spreads like a wildfire. The gossip gets so bad that it takes on a life of its own.
I have been imagining what this Shift in Consciousness is going to look like in five years, fifteen years, twenty five years.
One thing that's become clear is that it will result in small groupings of people whose realities match.
Other groups with dissimilar realities will co-exist, but will be outside of the influence of our own, and vice-versa.
It's no accident that we (you) are addressing to this idea with the awareness that we don't have to concern ourselves with the whole world.
The Shifted world will be unrecognizable. Once we realize that we create all of our reality, and that it can differ substantially from what others are creating, we can begin to circle our wagons, so-to-speak.
It is not selfish, nor fanciful, to believe that such a world is possible.
Not very many people are aware of what is coming. I will continue to speak to it as it becomes more apparent.
But also look at Heather LibertyCricket's comment (currently directly above) about the potential stagnation and stultification of small areas. How might that issue be addressed?
And it is possible for different realities to exist simultaneously on top of the same framework. Blueprints superimposed over the framework of our dimension.
One thing I started noticing long ago (really, before I was even calling myself a libertarian, let alone an anarchist) was libertarians' failure to think through their ideas to their logical conclusions.
For example, the boilerplate open-borders position of mainstream libertarians makes no sense. In a real anarcho-libertarian world, there would be borders EVERYWHERE. In some ways, travel and migration would be freer. But in other ways, people could make whatever restrictions they wanted in their own property or polities. That is what my panarchy-inarchy view seems to make more sense to me as to the way things would actually shake out in a condition of real freedom.
I don't know or have answers yet until we move deeper into the reality of the coming changes.
One thing I can be sure of is that nothing from the past is going to prepare us or even be relevant to this future other than our innate knowing of our own importance and rightness.
Those things we hold as ideals will see fruition, so the importance of imagining and steadfastness to what we value will continue to hold sway.
Which is why your work is so important, as well as the work of others who refuse to be defeated.
There's a lot of force in what you way, but here's a counter-vision: a healthy human being both has the personal circle of 150 AND has strong empathic feelings for the rest of humanity, though he cannot know them personally. They aren't NPCs; they each have dreams, views, and agency, which come across even when we bump into one momentarily.
What about "You are a thing to them. A source of money to extract. A cause of fear."? This describes sociopaths, who represent about 3% of the population by some estimates. These people, and pretty much these people alone, are motivated to seek and seize power over others.
I come to the same conclusion as you do: large government entities are destructive to human flourishing. Sociopaths are much easier to manage, and their scale of destruction much reduced, when their efforts are confined to the set of people who know them well.
" a healthy human being both has the personal circle of 150 AND has strong empathic feelings for the rest of humanity, though he cannot know them personally. They aren't NPCs; they each have dreams, views, and agency, which come across even when we bump into one momentarily."
—Yes, that is ideal. I think that is exactly what I experience when I encounter strangers. I LOVE talking with strangers. I find it fascinating. I offer compliments to random people and watch them light up. I carry on deep philosophical conversations with random people in lines for Disney attractions. Those people become a part of my 150 for a few minutes. (It helps that I am highly extroverted.)
But, a) that does not describe most people and b) Dunbar is probably right that those will be at best, a temporary phenomenon (when in direct contact with a stranger) or an abstract one, when thinking about "humanity" in the abstract.
(Also, I had two people unsubscribe within minutes of publication of this—probably because of the NPC terminology. But for goodness' sake—that was said by teenagers, trying to describe a philosophical and biological observation. Teenagers!)
Impossible to know for sure, and probably pointless to debate, but if what you say is true, then a) the vast majority of people who attend churches are hypocrites, and b) what would explain the outpouring of sympathy for the fate of the people of Gaza, much of it from people who aren't of the same ethnicity and who don't know anyone directly connected to the place?
Perhaps that phenomenon might still comport with Dunbar's concept, in that the sympathy is somewhat abstract, and does not carry the same emotional weight as the feelings one has for one's inner circle. (??)
Also, frankly, I find at last some people's sympathy to be a bit on the performative side.
Also, very selective. Plenty of things are happening in Africa, for example, that no one gives a crap about.
Also, very one-sided. The countries surrounding Israel said explicitly in 1948 that their goal was to kill every Jew (from the river to the sea), and that has remained the open, stated goal for most ever since. Many of the people who have sympathy for Gazans fail to have sympathy for Jews (and vice versa).
There is political baggage and great selectivity wrapped up in a lot of the areas in which people choose to display sympathy.
And still, I think that Dunbar is right that almost no human on Earth can feel the same about 15,000 deaths elsewhere as he would about the death of a single person in his inner circle.
"These people, and pretty much these people alone, are motivated to seek and seize power over others."
—Well golly—that small number sure do have an outsized influence on our lives. 7,000 years of oppression and forced wealth extraction perpetrated by 3% on the other 97%?
Kind of reinforces my description of humankind as a slave species.
"Kind of reinforces my description of humankind as a slave species."
I might not go quite so far as the word "slave", but yes, there seems to be a strong human tendency to cede power to some authority figure. Even to the point of allowing that figure to override natural empathy toward others and to view them instead as the enemy, to be wiped out.
Common sense and observation tell us that are associations are in concentric rings, with the degree of closeness dropping as we move outward from the center. Not sure of the details behind the science of why (Dunbar posits that) something drastic changes beyond 150.
As far as your household not talking to you on a daily basis… I know we are a poor substitute here at the Freedom Scale, but we'll talk with ya!
I’m a highly sensitive person (HSP). I’m not sure if you are familiar with us. Psychologist Elaine Aron coined the term. Brain imagery of HSPs show that areas of empathy “light up” more so when compared to not as sensitive types. We have more “mirror neurons” that make us feel exactly what others are feeling. There’s much more to it than that, but I’d have to quote the whole book. So, when I see others in pain (emotional or physical) I feel it. It doesn’t matter if I know the person or not. Dr Aron believes this to be an evolutionary trait. There’s also more brain activity in the area of the brain that’s believed to be “the seat of consciousness.” It also helps when deciding if something is dangerous or not, kind of like self preservation.
Anyway, I see everyone as human beings and not as NPCs. I was also raised to treat others the way you’d want to be treated. For example, if I enjoy having the liberty to decide for myself what goes into my body, then others should be afforded the same choice even if it’s different. Loving your neighbor means loving them through that difference. Human beings seem to forget this.
Also, I think a lot of other things can contribute to feeling disconnected from others like addiction and traumas (including childhood trauma carried out at the hands of emotionally absent parents). If people weaned themselves off the tv, their phones, social media, etc I think we would return to feeling connected. We wouldn’t be turning to the internet for everything. Imagine if we got rid of big grocery stores and banks. We need less centralized power, less monopolies. Education needs to be more free as well. I read in a book the other day “Today’s academicism does not allow for the acquisition of knowledge through intuition and psychism, an attitude placing it in paradoxical contradiction to a high proportion of those great thinkers whom the humanities study and purport to revere. In humanities, the universities have deteriorated into observers of, rather than participants in, the development of mankind’s creative and intellectual faculties.” The Qabalistic Tarot by Robert Wang. I think society has been intentionally structured in this way (the stunting of the development of mankind’s creative and intellectual faculties). If we had a society full of people who have developed intuition and psychic abilities, our habits wouldn’t be predictable. What we create would come from an infinite source, we grow unhindered in many directions. Right now, I feel our imaginations have been high jacked by schools and electronics. Life is a school. We’re supposed to be exploring and experimenting. We’re designed for it. Too many people are so busy watching what others have created or are wrapped up in the thoughts of others that very few people actually live.
What a wonderful, edifying, and interesting comment.
By and large, I agree, so there is little for me to say on most of it.
Just so you know, I do not think of others as NPCs. That is just how teenage me expressed the realization of the phenomenon.
As it happens, though I do not have the degree of special sensitivity that you describe, I try pretty hard to have really human interactions with everyone—very much including strangers.
More importantly, I believe that
a) all humans are ontologically equal (no one is born to rule or be ruled)
b) all human are self-owning persons with natural rights
c) all humans have equal claim to their natural rights
d) all humans' self-ownership must be respected by all other humans (which means no initiations of force against anyone)
Whether or not I would feel the same emotional pang at the loss of a loved one or a stranger is secondary. These precepts and rules are, and ought to be, our touchstone.
Maintain those and we will have peace. And maybe after a few thousand years of peace, more people can evolve to be more sensitive in the way you describe.
Overall, I agree with you. The problem however is that there are 330 million or so of us---just in this country. Break up everyone in small groups and self-govern. My first year in high school, there were 54 of us--whole school not my class. We moved to another base and the next new years the average of the school was roughly 200. Then my last year we went to a very large base, 600 just in the senior class. Somehow, I still learned all the seniors and tried to socialize with all of them. But it was very tough to do.I think you're right 100%. But maybe some 150 person group decides to invade the next one. It would happen.
You're not going to convince that none of the 2.2 million communities would never interfere or let all the other communities be. So there must be a structure, a council. or some type of governing structure to let people be protected from the community that wants to invade them.
You are living in your imagination otherwise.
And by the way, "democracy" is not wrong, but there are no democracies of 3+ million people which is why I don't like nation states anymore than you do.
My family ain't even a democracy, and there's not that many here anymore, but still someone has to defer if there is a difference, but a group must be small enough where everyone can have their say, and if all goes well you might respect each enough to come to a consensus. But how do you come to any understanding between communities if there is no communication between them? Maybe our current structure does not provide that, I think it doesn't do it very well. But I can't foresee an absence of some structure for dialogue and for preventing the disagreeable from taking over those they might disagree with.
Excellent questions, for which I believe there are also good answers.
First, I would note that in a condition of voluntary order (anarchy) in a large area like this, you would not just see small polities form. There would also likely be large areas in which market anarchism was the norm: individuals and households contracting with private providers of security and justice. (I lay out a lot of the possibilities in visual and taxonomic form here: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/what-kind-world-you-want)
Hans-Herman Hoppe does an excellent job of describing how competing private agencies would end up generating common protocols and an inter-agency common law. He also argues quite convincingly why it would be in their interests to form such a common law, and to cooperate in an overall peaceful framework. And why the aggregate of these agencies would dissuade external attacks as well.
As to the small polities, I think you are correct. A common protocol system would almost certainly form. Not everyone would be signatories, but enough would.
Such a circumstance would not eliminate human conflict. But small polities cannot tax endlessly, print infinite money, build arsenals of world-destroying weapons, and wage total/world-scale war. I will take the occasional regional skirmish over the 400 million dead in the 20th century and the looming threat of global annihilation any day!
I still think you're overly optimistic, and frankly I would never trust private security. Larger polities, as you say, could simply hire enough security to take over smaller polities. That's exactly how we got big govt in first place, that's exactly how Belgium terrorized and killed a great deal in the Congo, that's how the Dutch and British initiated there imperialistic lunge. Private security became Hitler's vanguard Schutzstaffel; that what is happening all over Africa now, and more or less exactly what has recently created terror in Haiti. Both the G9 and the Revolutionary Force in Haiti are private security outfits but the media is calling them hoods. Similarly the media called the famed Crips and Bloods gangs, they were really private security to protect their hood from other hoods. The paramilitary private security of Taylor (forgot first name) in Liberia. The Pinkertons and a few other private security firms less known killed how many minors and striking steelworkers in Pa,W.Va, Tenn. & Colorado.
Private security has taken more lives than most govts could imagine.
How can you talk about private security and anarchy unless by anarchy you mean free for all, winner take all---come on, Chris you have to do better than private security.
None of that is what any market anarchist is talking about or envisioning when they refer to well-capitalized agencies competing in a free and open market to provide justice and security services.
The rape of the Congo was done by a king marshaling the resources of a nation. To whatever extent he paid mercenaries to do his/Belgium's wishes (l'etat, c'est moi?) is of no consequence.
Hitler's power came from taking over a country—a system in which he had official control over, and could tax and conscript, everyone. Yes, the NDSAP began as a movement outside of the government, but it was taking over a government that gave them the power to do the damage.
The Bloods and Crips are not a market agency in any sense meant by any market anarchist. None of these are. Your entire argument is a category error.
If you make an honest study of it, I would be surprised if you're not convinced. At very least, after such a study, you will likely no longer be able to strawman the argument or come back with the same scolding tone.
Exactly! We are not enemies we are brothers and sisters. So much ridiculous divisions today and animosity between even men and women. The guys I know feel like the majority of women don’t feel like they need a man. For real I don’t know if they’re listening to some Feminazi stuff or what but I just had my car break down and called a friend to come help. And I want to say to all the men I know thank God for you guys!!! So yeah you were just the first one besides of course my friend who came to help me. As soon as I saw him I felt better !!! 😊
An evil force has been trying to turn men against women and women against me, destroy the family, etc. for a long time. But some of us are overcoming it. And our children will inherit the Earth.
I mean that quite literally. I recently saw a demographic analysis showing that the only people in America who are above replacement rate are religious conservatives—primarily Christians in the Midwest. 100 years from now, the crazies will have underbred themselves out of existence.
I agree with all of this in theory. But how do we square this with the dismal record of communes? Shouldn’t communes be great? Yet they often descend into madness. See, eg, Wild, Wild Country 🤣.
Why? Shouldn’t these monkeysphere-sized communities be utopian? Or have I been propagandized as to the failure rate of communes?
The Amish, et al, seem to do very well. They have a religious ethos guiding them and holding them together.
The kibbutzim in Israel have managed to survive by adjusting and going more private.
But you are correct that most socialist/communist communes fail. I think that tells us that the problem is socialism/communism, not the size of the polity or the concept of intentional communities in general.
Tribal systems do well. What little I know about tribal systems, they are not socialist in the way that some college-student lefty wants to believe they are. For example, I think the Yupik word for "lazy person" has the same root as their word for "shit." Poeple need to pull their weight.
A small community does not survive by adopting systems that run counter to human nature (socialism). They survive by working with reality, not against it.
The first year, the Pilgrims tried socialism and they almost died. Then Bradford said, "What ya grows, ya keeps!" and they had a bumper crop and thrived.
So, if I were trying to build a community, I wouldn't start by trying to pretend that common property works, or that we can share wives, or anything else that just doesn't work, no matter how much "nice people" want it to. I would start with strong property rights and then voluntary sharing and a strong community vibe. Potlock and mutual aid, not common stock.
Shared traditional religious values seems to have more to do with the success or failure of communes. Communes that embrace non-traditional spirituality seem destined for catastrophic failure.
But I’m not sure how much property rights have to do with it. One community I’m familiar with is the Hutterites. Their communes have no appeal to me, but they are successful in terms of longevity and cohesion. Each colony is a corporation and the individuals own nothing (while accepting all kinds of government welfare 🤣). I don’t know how property works in Amish communities or Kibbutzes.
The absence of property rights is, I believe, far more likely to succeed if there is a shared religious ethos. It won't work as well in other circumstances. I think there is ample evidence at this point.
I was just sayin g that if I were crafting an intentional community, I would go for robust property rights, and find other things to cohere around.
At Babel God separated the people and cultures and created new languages for them to avoid Nimrod creating the first New World Order. The spirit of Nimrod has attempted to revive it ever since…
Thank you. At least two people would disagree, as I had two unsubscribe within minutes of this going live!
I wonder if this is the "toxic positivity" Demi and I have been discussing. (People who refuse to acknowledge their own shadow, and who resent any mention of anything that isn't sunshine-and-lollipops woo.)
Oh yeah, for sure. I want MY people, not all the people. I just find the toxic-positivity phenomenon interesting and a little annoying. "La la la I can't hear you—stop saying true things that conflict with my rainbow vision…"
Thousands of years ago there were cities where people mostly knew everyone. If someone said the Goodrich’s son you would know they had 4 kids and know the parents, what type of people they were, if they were good or crooked. I was reading last week about what used to be called the watchman on the wall. These men would look out into the vastness of the world that was full of enemies and threats both small and large. They were place their to protect the citizens which included people they loved. Beyond that when strangers entered through the gates they would be watched to see if they deceived and divided the citizens of the city. If the watchman ignored the threats and citizens were killed or harmed the watchman had blood on his hands. If the watchman blew his trumpet and the citizens ignored the warning the blood was on the hands of the citizen. This is one great example of small communities looking out for its fellow citizens that has been lost in the systems of large countries. Like our country for decades our government has lost its love for the individual. Our layers of protection have been infiltrated by globalists that could care less for the citizen, your neighbors. So as we all see living in and keeping small communities are a way to keep each other safe. I fear what it’s going to take before we see small groups form to help keep each other protected. J.Goodrich
Yes and in that Way No One can see anyone even those outside their Parish as being separate from them. So while you are not as “ emotionally” impacted by those outside your Parish you still have compassion on and pray for them. Of course, in the Christian faith we do not despair or become “ emotionally” devastating by anything ( theoretically) because we understand that All things are from God for our Good so we can rejoice in any situation
That works for people who are people pleassrs and accepted into society readily. I was 'smart' in school. I didn't find my people until I got into bigger societies... because there weren't other people on my wavelength in my small town. When I chose to attachment parent my kids, phenomenon repeated. Then when my kids were vax injured, same thing. During covid, same thing. We have to have the bigger groups for us to find our people who see us as human when we no longer fit their narrative comfortably. Basically, I've not seen that people have your back even if you are a human to them, except in rare circumstances. I don't know where this research for 150 came from, but I'm super skeptical of it.
VERY interesting point. Certainly small towns can get quite stagnant.
That said, I guess a small polity does not have to be like M. Knight Shyamalan's "The Village"—cut off from everyone else. It can also just serve as the administrative unit, with people free to interact as they wish.
I will be giving this point a lot of thought!
In a small town or city, you can have 12k or more people wanting to know your business or eager to watch the drama unfold when it happens. It puts you in a position where you need to care. Then there is all the gossip that spreads like a wildfire. The gossip gets so bad that it takes on a life of its own.
For sure. Got any solutions in mind? Because the smallness also has a ton of benefits…
I have been imagining what this Shift in Consciousness is going to look like in five years, fifteen years, twenty five years.
One thing that's become clear is that it will result in small groupings of people whose realities match.
Other groups with dissimilar realities will co-exist, but will be outside of the influence of our own, and vice-versa.
It's no accident that we (you) are addressing to this idea with the awareness that we don't have to concern ourselves with the whole world.
The Shifted world will be unrecognizable. Once we realize that we create all of our reality, and that it can differ substantially from what others are creating, we can begin to circle our wagons, so-to-speak.
It is not selfish, nor fanciful, to believe that such a world is possible.
Not very many people are aware of what is coming. I will continue to speak to it as it becomes more apparent.
All good points!
But also look at Heather LibertyCricket's comment (currently directly above) about the potential stagnation and stultification of small areas. How might that issue be addressed?
And it is possible for different realities to exist simultaneously on top of the same framework. Blueprints superimposed over the framework of our dimension.
Yes! That is the point of my post here:
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/what-kind-world-you-want
I love it -- very few pragmatists leave room for the unknown and unseen!
The ability to recognize new information and integrate it into your equation is paramount.
Nicely done.
Thank you.
One thing I started noticing long ago (really, before I was even calling myself a libertarian, let alone an anarchist) was libertarians' failure to think through their ideas to their logical conclusions.
For example, the boilerplate open-borders position of mainstream libertarians makes no sense. In a real anarcho-libertarian world, there would be borders EVERYWHERE. In some ways, travel and migration would be freer. But in other ways, people could make whatever restrictions they wanted in their own property or polities. That is what my panarchy-inarchy view seems to make more sense to me as to the way things would actually shake out in a condition of real freedom.
And it's even more than that as the old rules will no longer apply as to what we view our reality as.
Unrecognizable is just that. We can scarcely imagine a world that doesn't look like this world.
We all have parts to play, and areas in which to offer our expertise.
Mine is not in the nuts and bolts, but in the holding the space for a new future.
I don't know or have answers yet until we move deeper into the reality of the coming changes.
One thing I can be sure of is that nothing from the past is going to prepare us or even be relevant to this future other than our innate knowing of our own importance and rightness.
Those things we hold as ideals will see fruition, so the importance of imagining and steadfastness to what we value will continue to hold sway.
Which is why your work is so important, as well as the work of others who refuse to be defeated.
These are exciting times.
And thank you!
There's a lot of force in what you way, but here's a counter-vision: a healthy human being both has the personal circle of 150 AND has strong empathic feelings for the rest of humanity, though he cannot know them personally. They aren't NPCs; they each have dreams, views, and agency, which come across even when we bump into one momentarily.
What about "You are a thing to them. A source of money to extract. A cause of fear."? This describes sociopaths, who represent about 3% of the population by some estimates. These people, and pretty much these people alone, are motivated to seek and seize power over others.
I come to the same conclusion as you do: large government entities are destructive to human flourishing. Sociopaths are much easier to manage, and their scale of destruction much reduced, when their efforts are confined to the set of people who know them well.
" a healthy human being both has the personal circle of 150 AND has strong empathic feelings for the rest of humanity, though he cannot know them personally. They aren't NPCs; they each have dreams, views, and agency, which come across even when we bump into one momentarily."
—Yes, that is ideal. I think that is exactly what I experience when I encounter strangers. I LOVE talking with strangers. I find it fascinating. I offer compliments to random people and watch them light up. I carry on deep philosophical conversations with random people in lines for Disney attractions. Those people become a part of my 150 for a few minutes. (It helps that I am highly extroverted.)
But, a) that does not describe most people and b) Dunbar is probably right that those will be at best, a temporary phenomenon (when in direct contact with a stranger) or an abstract one, when thinking about "humanity" in the abstract.
(Also, I had two people unsubscribe within minutes of publication of this—probably because of the NPC terminology. But for goodness' sake—that was said by teenagers, trying to describe a philosophical and biological observation. Teenagers!)
"But, a) that does not describe most people"
Impossible to know for sure, and probably pointless to debate, but if what you say is true, then a) the vast majority of people who attend churches are hypocrites, and b) what would explain the outpouring of sympathy for the fate of the people of Gaza, much of it from people who aren't of the same ethnicity and who don't know anyone directly connected to the place?
Perhaps that phenomenon might still comport with Dunbar's concept, in that the sympathy is somewhat abstract, and does not carry the same emotional weight as the feelings one has for one's inner circle. (??)
Also, frankly, I find at last some people's sympathy to be a bit on the performative side.
Also, very selective. Plenty of things are happening in Africa, for example, that no one gives a crap about.
Also, very one-sided. The countries surrounding Israel said explicitly in 1948 that their goal was to kill every Jew (from the river to the sea), and that has remained the open, stated goal for most ever since. Many of the people who have sympathy for Gazans fail to have sympathy for Jews (and vice versa).
There is political baggage and great selectivity wrapped up in a lot of the areas in which people choose to display sympathy.
And still, I think that Dunbar is right that almost no human on Earth can feel the same about 15,000 deaths elsewhere as he would about the death of a single person in his inner circle.
Complicated business!
"These people, and pretty much these people alone, are motivated to seek and seize power over others."
—Well golly—that small number sure do have an outsized influence on our lives. 7,000 years of oppression and forced wealth extraction perpetrated by 3% on the other 97%?
Kind of reinforces my description of humankind as a slave species.
"Kind of reinforces my description of humankind as a slave species."
I might not go quite so far as the word "slave", but yes, there seems to be a strong human tendency to cede power to some authority figure. Even to the point of allowing that figure to override natural empathy toward others and to view them instead as the enemy, to be wiped out.
Yes, that is an excellent point. The revolutionary French really got the modern nationalism ball rolling, and it has gotten worse since.
On the choice of the word slave, I think I have to stand by it, since most people DEFEND this arrangement:
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/government-equals-slavery
I agree with what you said. No surprise there, I'm sure. Also, I miss when Cracked was actually worth reading. Sigh.
Yeah, all things change. Judy keeps telling me about her favorite hair-care products getting discontinued. It is the way of things. Sunrise, sunset…
I don't think I know 150 people that well.
I have a family of 5 in my house.
My parents make it 7
My sister and her family make it 11.
The other 139 are people at work and maybe friends of my family.
Living in a polity of 150 would still be lonely for me.
Because the four people in my house don't talk to me on a daily basis.
Common sense and observation tell us that are associations are in concentric rings, with the degree of closeness dropping as we move outward from the center. Not sure of the details behind the science of why (Dunbar posits that) something drastic changes beyond 150.
As far as your household not talking to you on a daily basis… I know we are a poor substitute here at the Freedom Scale, but we'll talk with ya!
I’m a highly sensitive person (HSP). I’m not sure if you are familiar with us. Psychologist Elaine Aron coined the term. Brain imagery of HSPs show that areas of empathy “light up” more so when compared to not as sensitive types. We have more “mirror neurons” that make us feel exactly what others are feeling. There’s much more to it than that, but I’d have to quote the whole book. So, when I see others in pain (emotional or physical) I feel it. It doesn’t matter if I know the person or not. Dr Aron believes this to be an evolutionary trait. There’s also more brain activity in the area of the brain that’s believed to be “the seat of consciousness.” It also helps when deciding if something is dangerous or not, kind of like self preservation.
Anyway, I see everyone as human beings and not as NPCs. I was also raised to treat others the way you’d want to be treated. For example, if I enjoy having the liberty to decide for myself what goes into my body, then others should be afforded the same choice even if it’s different. Loving your neighbor means loving them through that difference. Human beings seem to forget this.
Also, I think a lot of other things can contribute to feeling disconnected from others like addiction and traumas (including childhood trauma carried out at the hands of emotionally absent parents). If people weaned themselves off the tv, their phones, social media, etc I think we would return to feeling connected. We wouldn’t be turning to the internet for everything. Imagine if we got rid of big grocery stores and banks. We need less centralized power, less monopolies. Education needs to be more free as well. I read in a book the other day “Today’s academicism does not allow for the acquisition of knowledge through intuition and psychism, an attitude placing it in paradoxical contradiction to a high proportion of those great thinkers whom the humanities study and purport to revere. In humanities, the universities have deteriorated into observers of, rather than participants in, the development of mankind’s creative and intellectual faculties.” The Qabalistic Tarot by Robert Wang. I think society has been intentionally structured in this way (the stunting of the development of mankind’s creative and intellectual faculties). If we had a society full of people who have developed intuition and psychic abilities, our habits wouldn’t be predictable. What we create would come from an infinite source, we grow unhindered in many directions. Right now, I feel our imaginations have been high jacked by schools and electronics. Life is a school. We’re supposed to be exploring and experimenting. We’re designed for it. Too many people are so busy watching what others have created or are wrapped up in the thoughts of others that very few people actually live.
What a wonderful, edifying, and interesting comment.
By and large, I agree, so there is little for me to say on most of it.
Just so you know, I do not think of others as NPCs. That is just how teenage me expressed the realization of the phenomenon.
As it happens, though I do not have the degree of special sensitivity that you describe, I try pretty hard to have really human interactions with everyone—very much including strangers.
More importantly, I believe that
a) all humans are ontologically equal (no one is born to rule or be ruled)
b) all human are self-owning persons with natural rights
c) all humans have equal claim to their natural rights
d) all humans' self-ownership must be respected by all other humans (which means no initiations of force against anyone)
Whether or not I would feel the same emotional pang at the loss of a loved one or a stranger is secondary. These precepts and rules are, and ought to be, our touchstone.
Maintain those and we will have peace. And maybe after a few thousand years of peace, more people can evolve to be more sensitive in the way you describe.
Overall, I agree with you. The problem however is that there are 330 million or so of us---just in this country. Break up everyone in small groups and self-govern. My first year in high school, there were 54 of us--whole school not my class. We moved to another base and the next new years the average of the school was roughly 200. Then my last year we went to a very large base, 600 just in the senior class. Somehow, I still learned all the seniors and tried to socialize with all of them. But it was very tough to do.I think you're right 100%. But maybe some 150 person group decides to invade the next one. It would happen.
You're not going to convince that none of the 2.2 million communities would never interfere or let all the other communities be. So there must be a structure, a council. or some type of governing structure to let people be protected from the community that wants to invade them.
You are living in your imagination otherwise.
And by the way, "democracy" is not wrong, but there are no democracies of 3+ million people which is why I don't like nation states anymore than you do.
My family ain't even a democracy, and there's not that many here anymore, but still someone has to defer if there is a difference, but a group must be small enough where everyone can have their say, and if all goes well you might respect each enough to come to a consensus. But how do you come to any understanding between communities if there is no communication between them? Maybe our current structure does not provide that, I think it doesn't do it very well. But I can't foresee an absence of some structure for dialogue and for preventing the disagreeable from taking over those they might disagree with.
Excellent questions, for which I believe there are also good answers.
First, I would note that in a condition of voluntary order (anarchy) in a large area like this, you would not just see small polities form. There would also likely be large areas in which market anarchism was the norm: individuals and households contracting with private providers of security and justice. (I lay out a lot of the possibilities in visual and taxonomic form here: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/what-kind-world-you-want)
Hans-Herman Hoppe does an excellent job of describing how competing private agencies would end up generating common protocols and an inter-agency common law. He also argues quite convincingly why it would be in their interests to form such a common law, and to cooperate in an overall peaceful framework. And why the aggregate of these agencies would dissuade external attacks as well.
As to the small polities, I think you are correct. A common protocol system would almost certainly form. Not everyone would be signatories, but enough would.
Such a circumstance would not eliminate human conflict. But small polities cannot tax endlessly, print infinite money, build arsenals of world-destroying weapons, and wage total/world-scale war. I will take the occasional regional skirmish over the 400 million dead in the 20th century and the looming threat of global annihilation any day!
I still think you're overly optimistic, and frankly I would never trust private security. Larger polities, as you say, could simply hire enough security to take over smaller polities. That's exactly how we got big govt in first place, that's exactly how Belgium terrorized and killed a great deal in the Congo, that's how the Dutch and British initiated there imperialistic lunge. Private security became Hitler's vanguard Schutzstaffel; that what is happening all over Africa now, and more or less exactly what has recently created terror in Haiti. Both the G9 and the Revolutionary Force in Haiti are private security outfits but the media is calling them hoods. Similarly the media called the famed Crips and Bloods gangs, they were really private security to protect their hood from other hoods. The paramilitary private security of Taylor (forgot first name) in Liberia. The Pinkertons and a few other private security firms less known killed how many minors and striking steelworkers in Pa,W.Va, Tenn. & Colorado.
Private security has taken more lives than most govts could imagine.
How can you talk about private security and anarchy unless by anarchy you mean free for all, winner take all---come on, Chris you have to do better than private security.
None of that is what any market anarchist is talking about or envisioning when they refer to well-capitalized agencies competing in a free and open market to provide justice and security services.
The rape of the Congo was done by a king marshaling the resources of a nation. To whatever extent he paid mercenaries to do his/Belgium's wishes (l'etat, c'est moi?) is of no consequence.
Hitler's power came from taking over a country—a system in which he had official control over, and could tax and conscript, everyone. Yes, the NDSAP began as a movement outside of the government, but it was taking over a government that gave them the power to do the damage.
The Bloods and Crips are not a market agency in any sense meant by any market anarchist. None of these are. Your entire argument is a category error.
Bottom line: If you really would like to understand what market anarchists are referring to when they speak of "private security," at some point you will have to read into the corpus of the subject: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/no-way-i-can-convince-you-anarchism
If you make an honest study of it, I would be surprised if you're not convinced. At very least, after such a study, you will likely no longer be able to strawman the argument or come back with the same scolding tone.
Exactly! We are not enemies we are brothers and sisters. So much ridiculous divisions today and animosity between even men and women. The guys I know feel like the majority of women don’t feel like they need a man. For real I don’t know if they’re listening to some Feminazi stuff or what but I just had my car break down and called a friend to come help. And I want to say to all the men I know thank God for you guys!!! So yeah you were just the first one besides of course my friend who came to help me. As soon as I saw him I felt better !!! 😊
An evil force has been trying to turn men against women and women against me, destroy the family, etc. for a long time. But some of us are overcoming it. And our children will inherit the Earth.
I mean that quite literally. I recently saw a demographic analysis showing that the only people in America who are above replacement rate are religious conservatives—primarily Christians in the Midwest. 100 years from now, the crazies will have underbred themselves out of existence.
Better a barrel of monkeys than a bucket of crabs.
amen!
I agree with all of this in theory. But how do we square this with the dismal record of communes? Shouldn’t communes be great? Yet they often descend into madness. See, eg, Wild, Wild Country 🤣.
Why? Shouldn’t these monkeysphere-sized communities be utopian? Or have I been propagandized as to the failure rate of communes?
It depends on how we define "commune."
The Amish, et al, seem to do very well. They have a religious ethos guiding them and holding them together.
The kibbutzim in Israel have managed to survive by adjusting and going more private.
But you are correct that most socialist/communist communes fail. I think that tells us that the problem is socialism/communism, not the size of the polity or the concept of intentional communities in general.
Tribal systems do well. What little I know about tribal systems, they are not socialist in the way that some college-student lefty wants to believe they are. For example, I think the Yupik word for "lazy person" has the same root as their word for "shit." Poeple need to pull their weight.
A small community does not survive by adopting systems that run counter to human nature (socialism). They survive by working with reality, not against it.
The first year, the Pilgrims tried socialism and they almost died. Then Bradford said, "What ya grows, ya keeps!" and they had a bumper crop and thrived.
So, if I were trying to build a community, I wouldn't start by trying to pretend that common property works, or that we can share wives, or anything else that just doesn't work, no matter how much "nice people" want it to. I would start with strong property rights and then voluntary sharing and a strong community vibe. Potlock and mutual aid, not common stock.
Shared traditional religious values seems to have more to do with the success or failure of communes. Communes that embrace non-traditional spirituality seem destined for catastrophic failure.
But I’m not sure how much property rights have to do with it. One community I’m familiar with is the Hutterites. Their communes have no appeal to me, but they are successful in terms of longevity and cohesion. Each colony is a corporation and the individuals own nothing (while accepting all kinds of government welfare 🤣). I don’t know how property works in Amish communities or Kibbutzes.
The absence of property rights is, I believe, far more likely to succeed if there is a shared religious ethos. It won't work as well in other circumstances. I think there is ample evidence at this point.
I was just sayin g that if I were crafting an intentional community, I would go for robust property rights, and find other things to cohere around.
Chris
This article brought up the song by Beck called
“Loser”
With the first line of lyrics
“In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey”
Great analysis
Continue onward
Jon
It's a classic song. Thanks!
At Babel God separated the people and cultures and created new languages for them to avoid Nimrod creating the first New World Order. The spirit of Nimrod has attempted to revive it ever since…
A little separation is good, IOW. Not qua separation, but because it reduces the perils of bigness.
True!
Fabulous piece. Good on you and Demi.
Thank you. At least two people would disagree, as I had two unsubscribe within minutes of this going live!
I wonder if this is the "toxic positivity" Demi and I have been discussing. (People who refuse to acknowledge their own shadow, and who resent any mention of anything that isn't sunshine-and-lollipops woo.)
It happens. It's how people self-prune. It keeps your audience strong, healthy and engaged. Better 1000 superfans than 10000 fairweather followers.
Oh yeah, for sure. I want MY people, not all the people. I just find the toxic-positivity phenomenon interesting and a little annoying. "La la la I can't hear you—stop saying true things that conflict with my rainbow vision…"
Thousands of years ago there were cities where people mostly knew everyone. If someone said the Goodrich’s son you would know they had 4 kids and know the parents, what type of people they were, if they were good or crooked. I was reading last week about what used to be called the watchman on the wall. These men would look out into the vastness of the world that was full of enemies and threats both small and large. They were place their to protect the citizens which included people they loved. Beyond that when strangers entered through the gates they would be watched to see if they deceived and divided the citizens of the city. If the watchman ignored the threats and citizens were killed or harmed the watchman had blood on his hands. If the watchman blew his trumpet and the citizens ignored the warning the blood was on the hands of the citizen. This is one great example of small communities looking out for its fellow citizens that has been lost in the systems of large countries. Like our country for decades our government has lost its love for the individual. Our layers of protection have been infiltrated by globalists that could care less for the citizen, your neighbors. So as we all see living in and keeping small communities are a way to keep each other safe. I fear what it’s going to take before we see small groups form to help keep each other protected. J.Goodrich
All well said!
Perhaps we can get back to that peacefully, somehow…
Yes and in that Way No One can see anyone even those outside their Parish as being separate from them. So while you are not as “ emotionally” impacted by those outside your Parish you still have compassion on and pray for them. Of course, in the Christian faith we do not despair or become “ emotionally” devastating by anything ( theoretically) because we understand that All things are from God for our Good so we can rejoice in any situation
Yeah, I think that is the right approach. Just because a small number works better does not mean that everyone else are enemies. Not at all!